Rule could 'fast-track' executions

Some Arizona officials say the new procedures are long overdue. "If you are going to have the death penalty at all, it shouldn't take 20 to 25 years," said Kent Cattani, the chief capital litigation counsel in the Arizona attorney general's office. "Either get rid of it altogether, or try to have a good system in state courts and then accelerate it through the federal courts."

On the other side, advocates for death row inmates and some legal experts say the rules would make a bad system worse.

"It is another means by which people are determined to shut the federal courts down to meaningful review of death penalty cases," said Elisabeth Semel, director of the Death Penalty Clinic at the UC Berkeley law school. "The inevitable result of speeding them up is to miss profound legal errors that are made. Lawyers will not see them. Courts will not address them."

"This is the Bush administration throwing down the gauntlet and saying, 'We are going to speed up executions,' " said Kathryn Kase, a Houston lawyer and co-chair of the death-penalty committee for the National Assn. of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

About 3,350 people are on death row in the U.S., including more than 600 in California. Most were sentenced in state courts, but death cases almost always end up being reviewed by federal judges too.

It is impossible to estimate how many inmates might be affected. Some with appeals pending could see their cases shortened.

"Cases in the system for 20 years in federal court, it will not affect those," said Cattani. But "it will prevent those from happening in the future."

The procedures would cut to six months, instead of a year, the time that death row inmates have to file federal appeals once their cases have been resolved in the state courts.

It would also impose strict guidelines on federal judges for deciding such inmates' petitions. Federal district judges would have 450 days, appeals courts 120 days. Proponents say that would prevent foot-dragging by liberal judges.

The costs associated with the death penalty have also been a growing concern to some states. California, for example, spends $90,000 more a year on housing a death row inmate than an inmate in the general prison population -- adding up to $57.5 million annually -- according to a 2005 study by The Times.